Bryce and Mac (Mountain Lion)

Will there ever be another upgrade to Bryce? I bought Bryce Pro in 2010 but have not been able to use it since upgrading my computer to Lion and now Mountain Lion. Still no fix for the problems: the program starts up but almost any box you call up crashes the program.

Neither of the previous topics answers the question. It is always said that there is a problem and that it one day might be solved. But should I keep hoping or is my money for Bryce 7 Pro totally wasted? Should I keep Bryce on my HD or are you never going to fix it?
After 2 years you should have found some time and /or people to fix the issues.
I owned every Bryce version since version 1; I am not a happy customer!

Those were just the first few threads I found with a quick forum search. There are several other threads in the Bryce forum about this issue.

It has been explained in other threads that Bryce 7 was released before Apple released OS X 10.7. The Bryce dev cycle was then wound up, The Mac dev guy who had been working on it was on contract, and his contract ended soon after this.

Some people have managed to get Bryce working in parallells or using bootcamp.

I am a software developer myself and I know what it means when you say that no new development cycle for Mac Bryce is planned : the product is dead.
I wish I knew when I bought Bryce 7 Pro!
I haven't had any need for Parallels and I find it rather offensive that you suggest I run Windows so Daz does not have to fix the problems with Bryce.
It is really a shame; I really liked Bryce....

Seriously? A product that hasn’t by now been fixed to work with what is already a superceded operating system (Lion), and which the owner admits to not even having a developer on staff any more, is, by any reasonable definition of the word, dead.

It’s just that DAZ refuse to admit it and turn off the life support system.

I am a software developer myself and I know what it means when you say that no new development cycle for Mac Bryce is planned : the product is dead.
I wish I knew when I bought Bryce 7 Pro!
I haven't had any need for Parallels and I find it rather offensive that you suggest I run Windows so Daz does not have to fix the problems with Bryce.
It is really a shame; I really liked Bryce....

It's getting a bit old reading people complaining that they can't use Bryce on their Mac...
Especially when I use it everyday... on a Mac. :roll:

How do I do this?
My perfectly working 6 year old Mac is running the perfectly working 10.5.8 OS... which in turn runs the perfectly working Bryce 7 Pro.

I am a software developer myself and I know what it means when you say that no new development cycle for Mac Bryce is planned : the product is dead.
I wish I knew when I bought Bryce 7 Pro!
I haven't had any need for Parallels and I find it rather offensive that you suggest I run Windows so Daz does not have to fix the problems with Bryce.
It is really a shame; I really liked Bryce....

It's getting a bit old reading people complaining that they can't use Bryce on their Mac...
Especially when I use it everyday... on a Mac. :roll:

How do I do this?
My perfectly working 6 year old Mac is running the perfectly working 10.5.8 OS... which in turn runs the perfectly working Bryce 7 Pro.

Since you mentioned this I've been scanning ebay for one. It would be handy to have a backup machine and something to test products on cross platform would not go amiss either. I'm hanging onto the end of the tax year though before I spend any money. As things stand, things are looking a bit lean... A situation not helped I am sure by bleak and uninformed pronouncements. Take DAZ 3D at their word or don't but as Pam says, if the Brycers are still using Bryce, it has a user base and that in turn will ensure it gets the attention it deserves.

Seriously? A product that hasn’t by now been fixed to work with what is already a superceded operating system (Lion), and which the owner admits to not even having a developer on staff any more, is, by any reasonable definition of the word, dead.

It’s just that DAZ refuse to admit it and turn off the life support system.

Oh so we should just ignore when an official Daz representative not forom moderators (no offense meant chohole, you're official in my book :) ) say that when it comes into the next dev cycle fixing the Mac compatability issue is their top priority? I understand the frustration you Mac people feel, it's not really much different from us PC users frustrated by the fact there is no 64 bit version and any 64 bit version will have to wait until after the Mac problem gets solved. The problem is, and what none of you Mac people that get so upset over this issue seems to understand is that Daz isn't as big of a company as you would like to believe. It can't afford to keep the necessary Mac people on board 365, in no small part due to the fact that the Bryce customer base is fairly small. Also obviously since it's not working for you guys with OSX Lion and above none of you guys are buying additional Bryce products. This means there isn't enough money coming in to justify spending the money on keeping the right Mac people around all the time.

What really gets me though is this problem as far as anyone knows is due to Apple dropping rosetta which allowed the old motorola chipset code, that has been in Bryce since the beginning, to work on the newer Intel chipset systems. As I understand it Apple decided to drop it because their license for it expired and they felt everyone should have been able to upgrade to a point of not needing Rosetta by that point. Well it's all fine and dandy to think that way when you are the richest most profitable company in US history but it's also alot like the attitude attributed to Marie Antoinette of "Let them eat cake". I just don't get why the majority of Mac people that post here about this problem don't feel like Apple should be expected to continue support for older code? Microsoft had a similar situation when they released Vista and then tried to drop support for XP. However instead of PC users getting all bent out of shape with small 3rd party software companies for not keeping their programs compatible with Vista they pettitoned and forced Microsoft to continue supporting XP until they could make a new OS that was backward compatible.

Being a Brycer is a life style. Those who want to use Bryce can also make it work. I find it also sad that the users of the new Mac OS are left out. But it's not all DAZ 3D's fault. Apple decided to stop supporting OS's older than 10.7. Such a dramatic change in a dot-release (10.6 to 10.7) is certainly quite uncommon. Windows 7 still supports programs written for DOS 3.2 and that spans over almost 20 years.

I am a software developer myself and I know what it means when you say that no new development cycle for Mac Bryce is planned : the product is dead.
I wish I knew when I bought Bryce 7 Pro!
I haven't had any need for Parallels and I find it rather offensive that you suggest I run Windows so Daz does not have to fix the problems with Bryce.
It is really a shame; I really liked Bryce....

She didn't mean to be offensive, it's just that you Mac people come in here all demanding and indignent like this is a major issue that must be fixed right now, this minute. Chohole knows that it's not going to happen that quick and so she is trying to give you solutions that will work today, right now. Chohole is just a forum moderator, as such she is likely either a volunteer or at best gets a token salary. Yet people speak to her as if she were in charge of Daz. That is being offensive, when you come in here giving the messenger a hard time just because you don't like the message.

I am a software developer myself and I know what it means when you say that no new development cycle for Mac Bryce is planned : the product is dead.
I wish I knew when I bought Bryce 7 Pro!
I haven't had any need for Parallels and I find it rather offensive that you suggest I run Windows so Daz does not have to fix the problems with Bryce.
It is really a shame; I really liked Bryce....

Actually the post I linked you to said this.

We are not doing any development at this time on Bryce. The only thing we are trying to do is see if we can update the code for Lion. We’ve had some set-backs so we can’t give a date on when to expect this update.

SO He did not say that there was no planned development for Mac Bryce, but indeed said that the only thing they were working on at this time is to try to get the code fixed so that Bryce will work with the new OS Xs

I do feel for Mac users, as I remember the frustrations I had having to wait till Bryce 2 came out before I could use it as I am a PC user.

Some people have managed to get Bryce working in parallells or using bootcamp.

Why should I be forced to install Windows/Parallels when I prefer to work with the Apple OS? I doubt there is a bridge from my DS 4 (soon DS 4.5) for Mac to Bryce 7 for Parallels/Windows. That means I would have to install DS and all my stuff again on the Parallels partition, and, what is worse, I can't use ANYTHING I made with DS for Mac. So, Parallels for me is no option.

Just for the records, Studio content can be installed on any folder of your choice. This has the advantage that it can be copied to any other computer on which Studio runs and have a backup. If you get a new computer, you can just copy that folder with all the sub-folders in it and you're set. No need to spend weeks to re-install everything.

I'm one of those OS 10.7 people. I have never used Bryce but, I hope to someday because I hear it's pretty cool. I use Cararra 8 Pro the most and really like it. Daz is a small company but, that's something I like about it. I've called support for help and they're really nice and friendly. I can support something like that and wait patiently for whatever updates they can produce to make Bryce work. Right now, for me, Bryce doesn't even open. That's okay. Everything else is pretty awesome as it is, imho.

Well, I've read several of these posts about the woes of using Mountain Lion w/Bryce, and I just gotta chime in (and after all, opinions are like a-holes...)

I am a "dyed in the wool" PC user. Though I worked for Apple for 5 years (1980 - '85), nowadays any time I sit in front of a Mac I want to tear my hair out. The things I take for granted on a PC are far more difficult on a Mac. Apple just tries too hard to be different than anyone else, and that has always caused problems. I have always respected Apple products - I think the Mac has always been a phenomenal piece of hardware - just never been fond of the Mac OS.

I've been writing software for a living (or at least part of my living) for a number of years now. I write for PCs. I don't write Mac versions of my programs. Because I hate Macs? No at all! I'd love to have versions of my software that worked on Macs. But I don't have the expertise to write programs for the Mac, and I can't afford to hire someone who does.

What many Mac users don't fully understand is, in the world of computer users, they are the vast minority! Yes, Apple has a slightly bigger market share in the graphics/publishing industry than they do in other areas, but it's still very small compared to the PC market. I know it doesn't seem fair, but money drives the market, and market share is what makes the money. I'm really not trying to be patronizing here, but many Mac users have sort of an attitude that they should be catered to, regardless of such temporal matters as profit and market share, just on the merits that the Mac is a great machine and Apple is a great company. These merits, though noble, don't pay the bills when you're selling software.

Bryce's dev cycle didn't coincide with Apple's. I doubt if Apple called someone at DAZ to warn them about the timing of their dev cycle, or the changes they were planning. DAZ simply got blindsided - that happens.

Ya, it seems unfair, and somewhat ironic as Bryce was originally a Mac program. But reality is reality, and reality for any business is about the bottom line.

I take great encouragement from the fact that DAZ has, at least publicly, committed to making Bryce work w/Mountain Lion as soon as is practically possible. But none of us can wave a wand and make real issues go away, and unfortunately there are some issues that have to be addressed in order to make this happen.

I take great encouragement from the fact that DAZ has, at least publicly, committed to making Bryce work w/Mountain Lion as soon as is practically possible.

Trouble is, Mountain Lion "as soon as is practically possible" may be for nought. Apple is already looking to move away from the Intel platform and develop its own Arm based CPU solution, in which case it'll be deja vu all over again.

Even if we get through the next five years without economic armageddon and major war (I'm not being entirely frivolous, I'm afraid), our Bryce world will change dramatically. The era of cheap creative workstations subsidised by mass desktop computer use is rapidly coming to an end. Now that granny and the grandkids can compute all they need with something half the size of a laptop screen (or less), machines that do Bryce are going to get expensive. Even the Poser / Studio business model could evaporate.

I take great encouragement from the fact that DAZ has, at least publicly, committed to making Bryce work w/Mountain Lion as soon as is practically possible.

Trouble is, Mountain Lion "as soon as is practically possible" may be for nought. Apple is already looking to move away from the Intel platform and develop its own Arm based CPU solution, in which case it'll be deja vu all over again.

No joke??!! I hadn't heard that.

Just when I thought Apple was gonna do something normal. They must have realized that everyone else uses Intel, so they couldn't possibly stay with it... :)

I'm sure they aren't doing it just to be different.
As usual, they will be doing it to be better.

And if it works out, I'm sure other manufacturers will follow as they have always tried to.

Gotta love Apple fans! (I was once one myself) Apple does some really cool stuff, I'll admit, but playing hopscotch with processor families sounds insane!

Are they planning to make all Apple software obsolete every year or so?? That's what would happen if they kept changing their processor platform with every OS update. Doesn't sound like a great business model to me...

But then, Apple has a habit of making phenomenally bad decisions and ending up smellin like a rose.

Not tryin to pull this into a "my dog's better than yours" contest - I just love ribbin' Apple fans :)

It's not something that'll happen next year, but it's perhaps significant that the guy in the jumpsuit has just announced that he will be retiring next year (three years early).

The mobile market is eating the desktop's lunch; X86 is in real trouble. It makes perfect sense for Apple to look to subsidise its specialist creative niche products with the economies of scale afforded by its mass mobile market success. It's not about being "better", it's about being commercially viable. Trouble for Apple is, Android is eating its lunch.

Yes, Apple has a slightly bigger market share in the graphics/publishing industry than they do in other areas, but it's still very small compared to the PC market.

cjreynolds, maybe you noticed that Bryce is for the graphics/publishing industry too. It is not a toy app.

In the DAZ shop there are so many interesting products for Bryce I don't buy (like Horo's and David Brinnen's great stuff, or Estevez' beautiful Tropical Environment) because I don't know if I can ever use them. I like DAZ and agree with laynemoore's opinion about this company, but this Bryce delay is... not nice. Maybe one should call on Kai Krause. As far as I know he's living not too far away from my place ;-) For those who may mistake this >wink

For the Mac/PC-discussion: Please, please, show some mercy and don't start all over again with this boring and useless talk. After all, meanwhile Microsoft and Apple stole so many ideas from each other that for the common user their OSs are not so different any more. But dont' tell them we know...

For the Mac/PC-discussion: Please, please, show some mercy and don't start all over again with this boring and useless talk. After all, meanwhile Microsoft and Apple stole so many ideas from each other that for the common user their OSs are not so different any more. But dont' tell them we know...

I totally agree there - I've known lots of people who are absolutely at home on a Mac, and would pull their hair out if they had to use a PC - I used to be one of them :)

Apple being my first computer job, and having the good fortune of being part of all that was Apple in the beginning, I do have a soft spot in my heart for Apple users - wouldn't hassle 'em if it wasn't so much fun, LOL!